Hymn to King Helios Dedicated to Sallust

I conceive that this discourse concerns most of all every creature that "breathes and creeps upon the earth," and that has partaken of being and of a rational soul and of mind; but not least of all the rest does it concern myself. For I am a follower of King Helios. Of this I have at home with me proofs more exact; but what it is lawful for me to say, and incurs no resentment, is that from my childhood a strange longing for the rays of the god sank deep into me, and from my earliest boyhood my mind was so set upon the ethereal light that I not only desired to gaze fixedly upon the sun himself, but also, whenever I went out by night while the sky was cloudless and clear, I straightway forsook all else and gave my attention to the beauties of the heavens, no longer understanding anything if someone spoke to me, nor heeding myself what I was doing. I seemed to be over-curious about these things, and to be something of a busybody, and someone already supposed me to be an astrologer when my beard had but newly grown. And yet, by the gods, no such book had ever come into my hands, nor did I yet at that time know what the thing was. But why do I say these things, when I have greater things to tell, if I should declare how I then thought concerning the gods? But let there be oblivion of that darkness. Let what I have said be a sign to me of this: that the heavenly light shone all around me and roused and incited me to its contemplation, so that even of the moon's motion, contrary to that of the universe, I observed by my own effort, before I had met with any of those who philosophize about such matters.

I count fortunate, then, the man to whom the god has granted, taking up a body compounded of holy and prophetic seed, to open the treasures of wisdom; nor do I dishonor that portion of which I myself was deemed worthy by this god, in that I was born in my own times among the race that rules and reigns over the earth. But I hold, if one must trust the wise, that this god is the common father of all men. For it is rightly said that "man begets man, and the sun"—the sun sowing souls into the earth not from himself only, but from the other gods as well; and to what end they declare it by the lives they choose. Most fair, then, is it, if it has befallen one even before three generations, descended from very many forefathers in succession, to have served the god; yet blameworthy is not even he who, having recognized himself to be by nature a servant of this god, alone of all, or with a few, gives himself up to the service of the master.

Come, then, let us hymn his festival, so far as we are able, which the reigning city honors with annual sacrifices. It is indeed, I well know, hard even merely to comprehend concerning him how great the unseen god is, reasoning from the visible; and to express it is perhaps impossible, even if one should be willing to say less than his worth. For to attain to what is worthy of him, I well know, no one of all men could; but not to fall short of the moderate measure in praising him is the sum of human power in the ability to express. But may the eloquent Hermes, with the Muses, stand by me as a helper for this, and Apollo the leader of the Muses, since to him too the office of discourse belongs; and may they grant me to say such things as are dear to the gods to have said and believed concerning them.

What, then, shall be the manner of the praises? Is it not clear that, having gone through his essence and whence he came forth, and his powers and his activities, both those that are manifest and those that are unseen, and the giving of good things which he performs throughout all the worlds, we shall make our encomia not altogether discordant with the god? But we must begin from here.

This divine and all-beautiful world, from the highest vault of heaven to the lowest part of earth, held together by the indissoluble providence of the god, has existed from eternity ungenerated, and is eternal for all time to come, guarded by nothing other than, immediately, the fifth body, whose summit is the sun's ray; and at a second grade, as it were, by the intelligible world; and at a yet older grade by the King of all, about whom all things are. This being, then—whether it is lawful to call him that which is beyond mind, or the Idea of beings, by which I mean the whole intelligible realm, or the One, since the One seems somehow to be the most ancient of all, or what Plato is wont to name the Good—this single-formed cause of the wholes, then, which leads forth to all beings beauty and perfection and unity and unspeakable power, in accordance with the primal-creative essence abiding within it, made manifest, as a mean from the means of the intellective and demiurgic causes, Helios, the greatest god, sprung from himself and like himself in all things; even as the divine Plato thinks, when he says: "This, then," I said, "understand that I mean the offspring of the Good, whom the Good begat analogous to itself; so that what the Good itself is in the intelligible region in relation to mind and the things known, that this is in the visible region in relation to sight and the things seen."

His light, then, has, I think, this same analogy to the visible that truth has to the intelligible. And he himself, the whole of him, since he came to be the offspring of the first and greatest Idea, the Good, having his subsistence about the abiding essence from eternity, received also the sovereignty among the intellective gods, dispensing to the intellective gods those very things of which the Good is the cause to the intelligibles. And the Good, I think, is to the intelligible gods the cause of beauty, of essence, of perfection, of unity, holding them together and shining round about them with a power like to the Good; these same things Helios also gives to the intellective gods, appointed by the Good to rule and reign over them, even though they came forth together with him and had their subsistence together with him—in order, I think, that to the intellective gods also a good-like cause, presiding over the good things for all, may direct all things according to mind. But there is also a third, this visible disk, manifestly the cause of salvation to the things of sense; and of as many things as we said the great Helios is the cause to the intellective gods, of so many things is this visible one also the cause to the things that appear.

Of these the proofs are clear to one who considers the unseen from the things that appear. Come, then, first, is not light itself a kind of incorporeal and divine form of that which is transparent in act? But this transparent, whatever it is—underlying, so to speak, all the elements, and being their immediate form, neither corporeal nor mingling nor admitting the qualities proper to body—you will not, then, speak of any heat proper to it, nor the coldness opposed to that heat, nor will you assign to it hardness or softness, nor any other of the differences perceived by touch, nor yet taste nor smell; but it falls under sight alone, when such a nature is brought into act by light. And light is the form of this, as of an underlying matter spread out and extended along with the bodies. And light itself, being incorporeal, would be a kind of summit and, as it were, the flower of it—rays. Now the opinion of the Phoenicians, who were wise and learned in things divine, said that the radiance which advances everywhere is the undefiled activity of pure mind itself; nor is the doctrine discordant, since light itself is incorporeal, if one should suppose its fount also to be no body, but the undefiled activity of mind illuminating its proper seat, which has obtained the middle of the whole heaven, whence shining forth it fills with all vigor the heavenly circles, and lights up all things with a divine and undefiled light.

The works that proceed from him among the gods have been spoken of by us moderately a little before, and shall be spoken of again a little later. But of the things we see, at first sight only the name of a work is left wanting, unless it should take to itself the guiding aid of light. For could anything be visible at all, if it were not first brought to light, as matter to the craftsman, that it might receive, I think, the form? For gold, simply poured out thus, is indeed gold, but not yet a statue or an image, until the craftsman puts the shape upon it. Even so, all things that are naturally fitted to be seen, if they are not brought to those who see them together with light, are wholly deprived of being visible. Giving, then, to those who see the seeing, and to the things seen the being seen, he perfects two natures by one activity, sight and the visible; and these perfections are forms and essence.

But this is perhaps too subtle. Yet that which we all follow—ignorant and laymen, philosophers and learned alike—what power has the god in the universe as he rises and as he sets? He makes night and day, and manifestly shifts and turns the whole. And yet which of the other stars has this? How, then, do we not already from these believe, concerning the more divine things, that even the things beyond heaven, unseen and divine—the races of intellective gods—are filled by him with the good-like power, to whom every chorus of stars yields, and generation follows, steered by his providence? For that the planets dance about him as about a king, and are borne round in their cycle at certain fixed distances from him most harmoniously, making certain stations and a course both forward and backward—as those skilled in the science of spheres name the phenomena about them—and that the moon's light waxes and wanes, affected by its distance from the sun, is plain, I think, to all. How, then, do we not reasonably suppose that the more ancient ordering of bodies among the intellective gods has an analogy to such an order? Let us take, then, from all things: the perfecting power we infer from the fact that throughout the universe it makes the things that can see, see—for it perfects them through light; the demiurgic and generative power, from the change about the whole; that which holds all things together in one, from the harmony of the motions toward one and the same thing; and the middle, from himself the middle; and that he is enthroned king among the intellective gods, from his middle rank among the planets.

If, then, we should see these things, or as many others, about any one of the other manifest gods, let us not assign to this one the sovereignty over the gods; but if there is nothing common to him with the others, beyond the doing of good, of which too he gives a share to all—then, calling to witness the priests of the Cyprians, who set forth common altars to Helios and Zeus, and before these, summoning still Apollo, who sits in council with this god, as a witness (for this god says, "One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios is Sarapis")—let us suppose that there is a common, or rather a single, sovereignty of Helios and Zeus among the intellective gods; whence Plato too seems to me not unreasonably to have named Hades a wise god. And we call this same one also Sarapis, the unseen, that is, and intellective, to whom he says the souls of those who have lived best and most justly journey upward. For let no one suppose this to be that one whom the fables persuade us to dread, but the gentle and mild one, who frees the souls altogether from generation, and does not, when they are freed, nail them to other bodies in punishment and exaction of penalties, but leads them up and stretches them out toward the intelligible world.

And that the doctrine is not altogether new, but that the most ancient of the poets, Homer and Hesiod, anticipated it—whether thinking thus, or, like the seers inspired by divine breath toward the truth—may be known from this. The one, deriving his genealogy, said he was the son of Hyperion and Theia, all but hinting through these that he was the true offspring of him who is above all things. For who else could Hyperion be but this one? And is not Theia herself, in another manner, said to be the most divine of beings? But let us not suppose any conjugation or marriages, the incredible and paradoxical playthings of the poetic muse. But let us reckon his father and begetter to be the most divine and supreme. And what other could such a one be than him who is beyond all things, and about whom all things are, and for whose sake all things exist? And Homer calls him Hyperion from his father, and shows his self-determination and his being superior to all necessity. For Zeus, as Homer says, being lord of all, constrains the others; but in the fable, when this god says that, because of the impiety of Odysseus' companions, he will forsake Olympus, he no longer says "I would drag up earth itself and sea itself," nor does he threaten bonds or violence, but says he will lay justice upon the offenders, and thinks fit himself to shine among the gods. Does he not through these things say that Helios, besides being self-determining, is also perfecting? For to what do the gods need him, except in so far as, shining unseen toward their essence and being, he becomes the fulfiller of those good things we spoke of? For the line, "Helios the unwearied, ox-eyed lady Hera sent unwilling to go to the streams of Ocean," says that night was thought to have come before its time because of a certain grievous mist. For this goddess, somewhere else too in the poem, says, "And Hera spread before them a deep mist." But let us leave the things of the poets; for they have, together with the divine, much also of the human. But what the god himself seems to teach us, concerning himself and the others—let us now go through those things.

The region about the earth has its being in becoming. Who, then, is it that bestows eternity upon it? Is it not he who holds these things together in fixed measures? For an infinite nature of body could not be, since it is neither ungenerated nor self-subsistent; and if from the essence something came to be continuously, while nothing dissolved back into it, the essence would fail of the things generated. This nature, then, this god, moving by measure, when he approaches, sets upright and rouses, but when he goes far off, diminishes and destroys—or rather, he himself ever gives life, moving and channeling life into it; and his departure and his shifting to the other side becomes the cause of corruption to the things that decay. Always, then, the giving of good things from him descends equal upon the earth; for at different times a different region receives such things, that generation may never fail, nor the god ever do good to the passible world less than or more than his wont. For the sameness, as of his essence, so too of his activity, is in the gods, and before all others in the King of the wholes, Helios, who makes his motion the simplest of all, beyond all those that are borne contrary to the universe—which very thing the famous Aristotle makes a sign of his superiority over the others.

But from the other intellective gods too come down into this world powers not faint. What, then, of this? Do we shut out the others, when we acknowledge that the sovereignty has been given to this one? But much more do we think fit, from the manifest things, to believe concerning the unseen. For just as he appears, with respect to the powers bestowed on all things from there to the earth, to perfect and fit them together both to himself and to the universe, so too must we suppose that even among the unseen things they have their communions with one another, with him as leader, and the others sounding in harmony with him at once. Since indeed, if we said that the god is established as a mean in the midst among the intellective gods, what kind of meanness it is, of which again we must suppose him a mean—may the King himself, Helios, grant us to say. We say "meanness," then, not that which is observed in opposites, standing at an equal distance from the extremes—as among colors the tawny or grey, and among hot and cold the lukewarm, and such things—but the unifying one, that gathers together the things that stand apart, such as Empedocles says harmony is, banishing from it strife altogether. What, then, are the things he gathers, and of what is he the mean? I say, then, of the manifest and encosmic gods and of the immaterial and intelligible ones, who are about the Good—the intelligible and divine essence being, as it were, impassively multiplied and without addition.

That there is, then, a certain mean—not blended from the extremes, but perfect and unmixed—the intellective and all-beautiful essence of King Helios, drawn from all the gods, manifest and unseen, sensible and intelligible, and what kind of meanness we must reckon it, has been said. But if we must also go through the particulars, that we may behold with the mind the mean of his essence even according to its species, how it stands toward the first and the last—even if it is not easy to go through all, yet let us try to express what is possible.

The intelligible is altogether one, ever pre-existing, comprehending all things together in the One. And what then? Is not the whole world too one living being, whole through whole, full of soul and mind, perfect from perfect parts? Of this double single-formed perfection, then—I mean that in the intelligible which holds all in one, and that union about the world which is gathered into one and the same perfect nature—the middle perfection of King Helios is single-formed, established among the intellective gods. But next after this there is a certain cohesion in the intelligible world of the gods, ranging all things toward the One. And what then? Does not also about heaven the essence of the fifth body, going round in a circle, appear, which holds together all the parts and binds them to themselves, holding together what is by nature scatterable in them and apt to flow apart from one another? These two essences, causes of cohesion—the one in the intelligibles, the other appearing in the things of sense—King Helios joins into one and the same, imitating the cohesive power of the former among the intellectives, since he came forth from it, and presiding over the latter, which is observed about the manifest world. May it not be, then, that the self-subsistent—being first in the intelligibles, and last in the things that appear in heaven—has as its mean the self-subsistent essence of King Helios, from which primal-creative essence there descends into the manifest world the radiance that shines round all things?

Again, considering it in another way: one is the demiurge of the wholes, but many are the demiurgic gods that go round in heaven. We must therefore set the demiurgy that descends from Helios into the world as the mean of these too. But also the generative power of life is much and over-full in the intelligible, and the world too appears full of generative life. It is clear, then, that the generative power of King Helios' life is the mean of both, since the phenomena bear witness to this; for some of the forms he perfects, others he works, others he adorns, others he rouses, and there is not one thing that comes to light and generation apart from the demiurgic power that comes from Helios. Furthermore, if we should conceive the undefiled and pure immaterial essence in the intelligibles—nothing alien approaching it from without nor inhering in it, but full of its own undefiled purity—and the nature, in the world, of the undefiled and daemonic body about that which is borne in a circle, unmixed with all the elements, exceedingly sincere and pure—we shall find the bright and unmixed essence of King Helios too the mean of both, of the immaterial purity in the intelligibles and of the undefiled and unmixed pure sincerity in the things of sense, free from generation and corruption. And the greatest token of this is that not even the light which especially is borne thence to earth mingles with anything, nor takes on filth and pollution, but remains in all beings altogether undefiled and unsullied and unaffected. Further, we must give heed to the immaterial and intelligible forms, but also to the sensible ones, all that are about matter or about the substrate. There will appear again here as a mean the intellective nature of the forms about the great Helios, by which even the forms about matter are aided, which would never be able either to be or to be preserved, were they not assisted by him toward essence. For what? Is he not the cause of the separation of the forms and the combination of matter, granting us not only to apprehend himself but also to behold him with our eyes? For the distribution of his rays throughout the whole world and the union of his light show forth the demiurgic separation of his making.

There being still many of the manifest good things about the essence of the god—which indeed establish that he is the mean of the intelligible and the encosmic gods—let us pass to his last manifest allotment. First, then, of the things about the last world is that of the solar angels, having as in a paradigm the idea and the subsistence; and after this the generative power of things sensible, of which the more honorable part holds the cause of heaven and the stars, while the inferior governs generation, holding from eternity within itself its ungenerated cause. To go through all things about the essence of this god is not possible even if this god should grant one to conceive them, seeing that even to comprehend all things with the mind seems to me impossible.

Since we have gone through many things, we must set, as it were, a seal upon this discourse, being about to pass to other matters needing contemplation no less. What, then, shall be the seal, comprehending all things as in a summary—the conception concerning the essence of the god? May he himself set it upon our mind, who wish to gather briefly both the cause from which he came forth, and what he himself is, and with what he fills the manifest world. It must be said, then, that from one god, the One, there came forth, one from one, of the intelligible world, King Helios, set as the mean among the intellective gods in their midst, according to every kind of meanness, the harmonious and friendly and that which gathers the things that stand apart, leading to unity the last things with the first, having in himself the means of perfection and cohesion and generative life and single-formed essence; and presiding over the sensible world with all manner of good things, not only through the radiance with which he himself shines round, adorning and brightening it, but also having given subsistence together with himself to the essence of the solar angels, and comprehending the ungenerated cause of the things that come to be, and, before this, the unaging and abiding cause of life among the eternal bodies.

What, then, was needful to say about the essence of this god has been said—not little, though most has been omitted. But since the multitude of his powers and the beauty of his activities is so great as to be an excess over the things observed about his essence (since the divine things, advancing into the manifest, are by nature multiplied through the superabundance and generativeness of life), see what we shall do, who strip ourselves to swim toward a boundless sea, hardly and scarcely having rested a little from the long discourse before. Yet we must dare, trusting in the god, and try to lay hold of the discourse.

In common, then, what was said before about his essence must be supposed to belong to his powers also. For the essence of a god is not one thing and his power another, and, by Zeus, a third thing besides these his activity. For all that he wills, that he is, and can, and does; for neither does he will what is not, nor does he lack strength to do what he wills, nor does he wish to do what he cannot. These things are not so with man; for there is in him a twofold warring nature blended into one, of soul and body—the one divine, the other dark and gloomy; and there is, as it were, a battle and faction. Indeed Aristotle says that for this reason neither the pleasures nor the pains agree with one another in us; for that which is pleasant, he says, to one of the natures in us is by nature painful to the one opposed to it. But among the gods there is nothing of the sort; for to them the good things belong by essence and continuously, not now yes, and now no. First, then, all that we said, wishing to set forth his essence, these things must be reckoned to have been said by us about his powers and activities too.

But since in such matters the discourse seems to be convertible, all that we next consider about his powers and activities, these must be reckoned not works only but essence also. For there are gods kindred to Helios and of one nature with him, who summit, as it were, the undefiled essence of the god—multiplied in the world, but about him in single-formed manner. Hear, then, first, what those say who view the heaven not as horses and oxen do, or any of the irrational and ignorant animals, but who from it busy themselves about the unseen nature; and before these, if you please, about his supercosmic powers and activities, and out of countless ones behold a few.

The first, then, of his powers is that by which, gathering the whole intellective essence through and through, and bringing its summits into one and the same, he renders it one. For just as it is possible clearly to perceive about the sensible world that air and water are taken up in the midst of fire and earth, the bond of the extremes—this one would not unreasonably suppose to be ordered the same way also in the case of the separate cause prior to bodies, which, holding the principle of generation, is not generation; so that there too the extreme causes, wholly separate from bodies, gathered into the same by King Helios through certain means, are united about him. And there runs together with him also the demiurgic power of Zeus, on account of which we said before that their precincts are established together in Cyprus, and have been shown forth in common; and we called Apollo himself to witness our words, who, it is likely surely, knows better concerning his own nature; for he too is together with Helios and communicates with him, because of the simplicity of his intellections and the abidingness of his essence and his activity being according to the same. But also the partible demiurgy of Dionysus the god nowhere appears to separate from Helios; rather, ever subordinating it to him and showing it to be enthroned with him, he is for us the expounder of the fairest conceptions concerning the god. And comprehending in himself all the principles of the fairest intellective blending, this god is Helios Apollo, leader of the Muses. And since he also fills up for us the whole life of good order, he begets Asclepius in the world, but has him also before the world beside himself.

But one might, observing many other powers about this god, never attain to all of them. It suffices to have observed, of the separate cause and that which is before bodies—about the very causes, I think, which, separated, pre-exist before the manifest demiurgy—that the sovereignty of Helios and Zeus is equal and one; and, having observed the simplicity of the intellections together with the everlasting and abiding sameness, that this is together with Apollo; and the partible character of the demiurgy, together with Dionysus who governs the partible essence; and the fairest symmetry and intellective blending, about the power of the leader of the Muses; and, conceiving that which fills up the good order of the whole life together with Asclepius.

So much, then, concerning his precosmic powers; and works of the same rank with these, beyond the manifest world, are the fulfillment of good things. For since he is the true offspring of the Good, having received from it the perfect good portion, he himself distributes it to all the intellective gods, giving them a good-working and perfect essence. This, then, is one. A second work of the god is the most perfect distribution of intelligible beauty among the intellective and incorporeal forms. For since the generative essence that appears in nature longs to beget in the beautiful and to lay down its offspring, it is necessary that there go before it that which does this very thing eternally and ever in the intelligible beauty—and not now yes, and again no, and at one time begetting, and again barren. For all that is beautiful here at any time, that is in the intelligibles always. We must say, then, that there goes before his generative cause in the manifest things the ungenerated offspring in the intellective and everlasting beauty, which this god has given subsistence to about himself, and to which he distributes the perfect mind. Just as he gives sight to the eyes through light, so too in the intelligibles, through the intellective paradigm, which he holds forth far brighter than the ethereal radiance, he grants, I think, to all the intellectives the power both to think and to be thought. Another activity, besides these, appears wonderful about the King of the wholes, Helios: the better portion bestowed on the higher races—angels, daemons, heroes, and partible souls, as many as abide in the rank of paradigm and idea, never giving themselves to a body.

The precosmic essence of the god, then, and his powers and works, hymning the King of the wholes, Helios, and hastening so far as it was possible for us to attain to the praise of him, we have gone through. But since "eyes," they say, "are more trustworthy than ears"—though they are less trustworthy and weaker than intellection—come, asking of him to speak moderately, let us try concerning his manifest demiurgy too.

There subsisted, then, about him the manifest world from eternity, and the encosmic light has its seat from eternity—not now yes, and then no, nor at different times differently, but ever in the same manner. But if one should wish to apprehend this everlasting nature temporally, as far as conception goes, he would most easily know, of King Helios shining all at once, how many good things he is the cause of to the world through eternity. I know, indeed, that the great Plato, and after him a man later in time but in no way inferior in nature—I mean the Chalcidian, Iamblichus, who initiated us through his discourses both into other matters of philosophy and into these—employed the notion of becoming only as a hypothesis, and supposed the making to be, as it were, temporal, that the greatness of the works done by him might be conceived. But for me, falling altogether short of their power, there is no risk to be ventured, since not even this—to suppose, up to a bare hypothesis, a certain temporal making about the world—did the famous hero Iamblichus reckon free from risk. But since the god came forth from an eternal cause, or rather brought forth all things from eternity, generating all the manifest things from the unseen by divine will and unspeakable swiftness and unsurpassable power, all together in the present time, he obtained, as a more proper seat, the middle of heaven, that he might distribute equally on every side the good things to the gods who came forth by him and with him, and might govern the seven and the eighth circular motion of heaven, and, I think, a ninth demiurgy, the becoming that is ever cycled round in continuous generation and corruption. For the planets, dancing manifestly about him, have as the measure of their motion such a harmony of figures toward this god; and the whole heaven, harmonized to him in all its parts, is full of gods from Helios. For this god is the ruler of five circles in heaven, and going over three of these, in three he begets the three Graces; the remaining ones are the scales of great Necessity. Perhaps I speak unintelligibly to the Greeks—as though one ought to say only the customary and familiar; yet not even this is, as one might suppose, altogether strange. Who, O wisest men who accept most things untested, are the Dioscuri to you? Are they not called "men of alternate days," because it is not lawful for them to be seen on the same day? How you understand this is clear—of yesterday and today. Then what does this mean, by the Dioscuri themselves? Let us fit it to some nature and reality, that we may say nothing empty or senseless. But we should not find it, examining accurately; for not even, as some supposed it was said by the theologians, do the two hemispheres of the universe have any sense in it; for how each of them is "of alternate days" is not even easy to conceive, since each day there is an imperceptible increase in their illumination. Let us now consider concerning the things in which we ourselves seem perhaps to innovate. They might rightly be said to share the same day, to whom the time of the sun's journey above the earth is equal in one and the same month. Let one see, then, whether the "alternate-day" character does not fit the circles, both the others and the tropics. One will suppose: it is not equal. For the latter always appear, and to those who dwell on the side of the earth with shadows falling opposite, both appear to both; but of the former, those who see the one in no way see the other.

But that I may not waste time saying more about the same things—he who works the solstices, as we know, is the father of the seasons; and he who never forsakes the poles would be Ocean, ruler of a double essence. Surely this too is no obscure thing we say, since before us Homer too said it: "Ocean, who is the source of all"—of mortals and of gods, as he would himself say, "of the blessed"—truly. For there is no one of all things that is not by nature the offspring of the essence of Ocean. But what is this to the poles? Do you wish me to tell you? And yet it were better kept silent; but it shall be said nonetheless.

It is said, then, even if not all readily accept it, that the disk is borne upon the starless region, much higher than the fixed sphere; and thus he will not have the middle of the planets, but of three worlds, according to the initiatory hypotheses—if one ought to call such things hypotheses, and not these dogmas, but those of the spherical reasoners hypotheses. For the one set, having heard of gods or of certain great daemons, speak; the others suppose the probable from the agreement with the phenomena. It is worthy, then, to praise these latter too, but to believe those former, whoever thinks it better; and this man I, in jest and in earnest, admire and marvel at. And these things, then, are thus, as they say.

There is, besides the things I spoke of, a great multitude of gods about heaven, whom those perceived who view the heaven not carelessly nor like the cattle. For dividing the three into four through the communion of the zodiac circle with each of them, he again divides this zodiac into the twelve powers of gods, and indeed each of these into three, so as to make six and thirty. Whence, I think, there descends to us from above, from the heavens, the threefold gift of the Graces, from the circles which this god, dividing into four, sends down the fourfold splendor of the seasons, which hold the turnings of the times. And the Graces too on earth imitate the circle through their images. And Dionysus is the giver of grace, said to reign together with Helios in the same.

Why, then, do I still tell you of Horus and the other names of gods, all belonging to Helios? For men comprehended the god from what this god works, having perfected the whole heaven with intellective good things and imparted to it the intelligible beauty, beginning from there with the whole of it and its parts by the abundant giving of good things. For he governs every motion down to the last allotment of the world; nature and soul and all that ever is, all things everywhere, are perfected.

And having ordered so great an army of gods into one ruling unity, he handed it over to Athena Pronoia, whom the fable says was born from the head of Zeus, but we say was put forth whole from the whole King Helios, contained within him—differing thus from the fable, that it was not from the topmost part, but whole from whole; since in all else, reckoning Zeus to differ in nothing from Helios, we agree with the ancient report. And in this very thing, calling Athena Pronoia, we do not innovate, if we hear rightly: "He came to Pytho and to the grey-eyed Pronoia." So, then, even to the ancients Athena Pronoia appeared enthroned with Apollo, who is reckoned to differ in nothing from Helios. May it not be, then, that Homer too by divine lot—for he was, as is likely, god-possessed—prophesied this in many places of his poem: "May I be honored as Athena and Apollo are honored"—by Zeus, surely, who is the same as Helios?

And just as King Apollo communicates with Helios through the simplicity of his intellections, so too must we suppose that Athena, having received her essence from him and being his perfect intellection, joins the gods about Helios again to the King of the wholes, Helios, into union without confusion, and herself, distributing the undefiled and pure life from the highest vault of heaven through the seven circles down to the Moon, channels it; whom this goddess, being the last of the circular bodies, filled with prudence, by which the Moon beholds the intelligibles beyond heaven, and, adorning the matter beneath herself with forms, takes away its bestial and turbulent and disordered character. And to men Athena gives good things—wisdom and intelligence and the demiurgic arts. And she dwells, surely, in the citadels, having established political fellowship through wisdom.

A little more about Aphrodite, whom the learned of the Phoenicians acknowledge to take part in the demiurgy with the god, and I am persuaded of it. She is, then, the blending of the heavenly gods, and the friendship and union of their harmony. For being near Helios and running round with him and approaching him, she fills heaven with good temperament, and gives generativeness to the earth, herself too providing for the everlasting generation of living things, of which King Helios holds the primal-creative cause, while Aphrodite is the joint cause with him—she who charms our souls with gladness, and sends down to earth from the ether sweetest and undefiled rays, more glittering than gold itself.

I wish to add still further from the theology of the Phoenicians; and whether not in vain, the discourse as it advances will show. Those who dwell in Emesa, a place sacred from eternity to Helios, enthrone together with him Monimos and Azizos. Iamblichus, from whom we have taken these and all other small things out of many, says that the riddle is that Monimos is Hermes and Azizos Ares, assessors of Helios, channeling many good things to the region about the earth.

Such, then, are the works of the god about heaven, and, accomplished through these, they extend down to the last bounds of earth; but all that he works beneath the Moon, it would be long to number them all. Yet these too must be told as in a summary. I know that I mentioned it before, when I thought fit to consider the unseen things from the manifest concerning the essence of the god; but the discourse requires me even now to set them forth in order.

Just as, then, we said that Helios holds the sovereignty among the intellectives, having a great multitude of gods about his indivisible essence in single-formed manner, and again among the sensible things, which travel the everlasting circular course, most blessed, we showed him to be the originator and lord, giving generativeness to nature, and filling the whole heaven, as with the visible radiance, so also with countless other unseen good things, and that the good things furnished by the other manifest gods too are perfected from him, and, before these, that those very gods are perfected by his unspeakable and divine activity—so too we must suppose that certain gods have set foot about the region of generation, held together by King Helios, who, steering the fourfold nature of the elements, dwell together with the three higher races in the souls upon which these are fixed. And of how many good things he is the cause to the partible souls themselves, holding out to them judgment, and setting them right by justice, and purifying them by brightness! And does he not move and rekindle the whole of nature, giving it generativeness from above? And is he not truly, to the partible natures too, the cause of their journey to their end? For Aristotle says that man is begotten by man and by the sun. The same, then, also concerning all the others, all the works of the partible natures, it is fitting to think concerning King Helios. What? Does not this god work for us the rains and winds and the things that come to be in the upper air, using the twofold exhalation as matter? For warming the earth he draws up vapor and smoke, and from these come to be not only the things on high, but also all affections upon earth, small and great.

Why, then, do I go through the same things at greater length, when I may now walk toward the end, having first hymned all the good things that Helios has given to men? For being born from him, we are nourished by him. The more divine things, then, all that he gives to souls, freeing them from the body, and then leading them up to the kindred essences of the god, and the subtle and well-strung quality of the divine radiance given, as it were, as a vehicle for the souls' safe descent into generation—let these be hymned worthily by others, and by us believed rather than demonstrated; but the things that are naturally known to all, we must not shrink from going through.

Plato says that heaven became for us the teacher of wisdom. For thence we perceived the nature of number, whose difference we perceived in no other way than through the sun's revolution. For Plato himself says that day and night came first. Then, from the light of the moon, which is given to this goddess by the sun, after this we advanced further in such understanding, everywhere aiming at the agreement with this god. As he himself somewhere says, that since our race is by nature toilsome, the gods, taking pity, gave us Dionysus and the Muses as fellow-dancers. And Helios appeared to us as the common leader of these, hymned as father of Dionysus, and leader of the Muses.

And does not Apollo, who reigns together with him, who set up oracles everywhere on earth, give to men inspired wisdom, and adorn the cities with sacred and political ordinances? He civilized, through the Greek colonies, most of the inhabited world, and prepared it to submit more easily to the Romans, who themselves have not only a Greek race but also sacred ordinances and the right belief concerning the gods, Greek from first to last, established and guarded by them, and besides this an ordering of their city no worse than that of any of the best-governed cities, if not better than all the others that have ever been in use as polities; in return for which, I think, I myself recognized the city to be Greek in race and polity. Why should I still tell you how he took forethought for the health and salvation of all, begetting Asclepius the savior of the wholes; and how he gave all manner of virtue, sending Aphrodite down to us together with Athena, all but laying it down as a guardian law to use the union for no other purpose than the generation of the like? For this reason, in his revolutions, all things that grow and all the tribes of every kind of living things are moved toward the begetting of the like. Why should I exalt his rays and his light? A moonless and starless night, how fearful it is—does anyone consider it, that from it he may infer how great a good we have from the sun, the light? And furnishing this very thing continuous and without intermediary to the night in the places where it is needful, from the moon to the regions above, he gives us a respite from our toils through the night. There would be no end of the discourse, if one should wish to go through all such things. For there is not one good thing in life which we have without having received it from this god—either perfect from him alone, or, through the other gods, perfected by him.

He is for us the founder also of the city. At any rate, not only does Zeus, hymned as the father of all, dwell in its citadel, together with Athena and Aphrodite, but Apollo too on the Palatine hill, and Helios himself, this common and familiar name for all. And how we, the children of Romulus and of Aeneas, belong wholly and in all ways to him, having much to say, I will say briefly the best-known things. Aeneas, they say, was born of Aphrodite, who is the minister and kinswoman of Helios. And our city's very founder report has handed down as the son of Ares, confirming the paradox of the account by the signs that afterward followed. For a she-wolf, they say, gave him her teat. Now that Ares, called Azizos by the Syrians who dwell in Emesa, goes before Helios in procession, I think I will pass over, though I know it and have said it before. But why does the wolf belong rather to Ares, and not to Helios? Yet they call the year's time "lykabas," from the wolf; and not only Homer and the famous men of the Greeks name it by this name, but the god too; for he says, accomplishing "in the dance the twelve-month courses of the lykabas." Do you wish, then, that I tell you a greater token still, that the founder of our city was not sent down by Ares alone, but perhaps a warlike and noble daemon assisted in the fashioning of his body—the one said to have visited Silvia as she carried water to the goddess for the bath—but the whole soul came down from Helios, the soul of the god Quirinus? For we must believe, I think, the report. An exact conjunction of those who have divided the manifest kingdom, Helios and the Moon, just as it led him down to earth, so too led up him whom it received from earth, making vanish the mortal part of his body by the fire of the thunderbolt. So manifestly the demiurge of things about the earth, being utterly beneath the sun, received Quirinus sent down to earth through Athena Pronoia, and, when he flew up again from earth, led him back at once to the King of the wholes, Helios.

Do you wish me to tell you yet another token concerning the same things, the work of King Numa? Holy virgins among us guard an unquenchable flame from the sun at the different seasons, who keep the fire produced about the earth by the god. Still greater than these I have to tell you a token of this god, the work of the most divine King himself. The months are reckoned by almost all others from the moon, but we alone and the Egyptians measure the days of each year by the motions of the sun. If after this I should say that we also honor Mithras and hold quadrennial games to Helios, I shall be saying newer things; but it is better perhaps to set forth one of the older things.

For the yearly cycle, men make its beginning at different points—some at the spring equinox, some at the height of summer, and most when autumn is already waning—hymning the most manifest gifts of Helios: the one, the good opportunity for labor that is given, when the earth blooms and exults, all the crops just springing up, and the seas become fit for sailing, and the unpleasantness and gloom of winter shift to the brighter; others honored the season of summer, as having then a sure confidence concerning the generation of the crops, the seeds being already gathered, and the autumn already at its height, and the fruits upon the trees ripening. Others, more refined than these, supposed the end of the year to be the most perfect height and decline of all the crops; therefore they too hold their yearly new-moons when the autumn is already waning. But our forefathers, from that most divine King Numa, revering this god yet more, left aside the things of utility—being, I think, by nature divine and exceptional in mind—and saw him to be the cause of these things, and ordained to hold the new-moon in agreement with the present season of the seasons, when King Helios returns again to us, leaving the farthest points of the south, and, as around a turning-post bending Capricorn, comes from the south to the north to impart to us the yearly good things. That they ordained the yearly new-moon thus, having considered this accurately, one might perceive from this. For they ordained the festival, I think, not on the day on which the god turns, but on the day on which he becomes manifest to all, passing from the south to the north. For the precision of the canons was not yet known to them, which the Chaldeans and Egyptians discovered, and Hipparchus and Ptolemy perfected; but judging by perception, they followed the phenomena. And these things were thus understood, as I said, by those of later times also. Before the new-moon, immediately after the last month of Cronus, we hold to Helios the most splendid games, dedicating the festival to Helios the Unconquered; after which it is not lawful that any of the gloomy, though necessary, spectacles which the last month contains be performed; but to the Cronia, which are last, the Heliaia are immediately joined in the cycle—

which may the kingly gods often grant me to hymn and to perform, and before all the others, King of the wholes, Helios himself, who came forth from eternity about the generative essence of the Good, a mean among the means of the intellective gods, having filled them with cohesion and countless beauty and generative abundance and perfect mind and all good things together timelessly, and in the present shining into the manifest seat that is borne in the middle of the whole heaven, his own from eternity, and imparting to the whole manifest world the intelligible beauty, and having filled the whole heaven with as many gods as he himself holds intellectively in himself, multiplied indivisibly about him and joined to him in single-formed manner; nay further, holding together the region beneath the moon through everlasting generation and through the good things imparted from the circular body, taking care of the common race of men and privately of our city—just as he gave subsistence to our soul too from eternity, declaring it his follower. These things, then, all that I prayed for a little before, may he grant; and further, may he, bestowing upon the city in common the eternity that is possible, with goodwill guard it; and to us may he grant to fare well in things human and divine, so far as he permits us to live; and may he grant us to live and engage in public life, so long as it is dear to him and better for us and profitable to the common affairs of the Romans.

These things, O dear Salustius, according to the threefold demiurgy of the god, having come into my memory in three nights especially, so far as it was possible, I have dared to write to you, since the former thing too, written by us for the Cronia, appeared to you not altogether to be cast aside. But if you wish to attend to more perfect and more mystical discourses about these same matters, having met with the writings composed by the divine Iamblichus about these very things, you will find there the end of human wisdom. May the great Helios grant me to know no less concerning him, and to teach both all men in common and privately those worthy to learn. And until the god grants me this, let us in common worship Iamblichus, dear to the god, from whom even now we have gone through these few things out of many that came into my mind. For of him I well know that no one will say anything more perfect, not even if, after much toil besides, he should innovate; for he will deviate, as is likely, from the truest conception of the god. It would, then, perhaps have been vain, if I had been making my discourse for the sake of instruction, to write anything myself after him; but since, wishing to go through a thankful hymn of the god, I supposed there to be in this a place for declaring concerning his essence according to my own power, I think these discourses have not been made in vain—accepting the line "Do according to your power sacred things to the immortal gods," not of sacrifices only, but also of the praises offered to the gods. I pray, then, a third time, that in return for this my eagerness, the King of the wholes, Helios, become gracious to me, and grant a good life and a more perfect prudence and a divine mind, and the gentlest appointed release from life at the fitting time, and a journey up to him thereafter, and an abiding beside him—everlasting, most of all; but if that be too great for the life I have lived, then very many and many-yeared revolutions.